


Sequel

by lordnelson100



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Feels, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Post-War, Sad Ending, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 11:48:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12210684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordnelson100/pseuds/lordnelson100
Summary: Bilbo arrived home one afternoon to find Thorin Oakenshield, sitting up very straight and haughty on the back of a sturdy white pony, just outside his parlor window. Staring into it, in fact, with a stormy expression on his face.He’s rung, Bilbo thought, and knocked, and gotten no answer, since I was out. And now he is annoyed. I don’t suppose it’s occurred to him to write a note and put it in the letter box,Sorry I missed you, I shall come back at tea time,like an ordinary person.





	Sequel

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Author chooses not to warn :) Proceed at your own risk.

 “You are mocking me,” said Thorin, fiercely.

“ _Am_ I? Does that sound like me? To mock a friend about something like that? I don’t think it does,” Bilbo replied mildly. He sent a ring of smoke sailing up away and into the branches of the great green willow arching over the river bank. “ _Teasing_ , I grant you. An occasional note of sarcasm, perhapsthe odd witty rejoinder. But mocking you, no indeed.”

 Thorin looked at him under dark, drawn brows for a long minute, and then let his head fall back against the grassy bank.

At last he said, “There has never been a question of marriage with me. I had the future of my people to look to. But beyond that, I do not lie with the women among our people. I mean that I do not want to.”

“Oh,” said Bilbo. “Then you—you do with the men?”

“You, who see so much about me, even things I have not told you”, said Thorin, almost angrily. “You cannot see _that_?”

“No, as it happens, I cannot. Which is why I asked.” He took a long puff of his pipe. “You do actually need to tell people things, you know, from time to time. Not just brood at them.”

Thorin’s eyes were moving rapidly in thought, though he was only looking at the sky. At last he burst out, “I do not believe you!”

“You do not believe me, how?” said the Hobbit, mildly.

“That you did not _see_. There were times on the Quest when we—when you and I—” He stopped.

Bilbo waited for him to continue, evidently: he did not supply any words. _Infuriating,_ Thorin thought.

Thorin got himself up on one elbow and turned towards his companion. “Tell me that when we parted, you were not _wishing_ for me to—” 

The other only looked at him with his crafty, wise little face, with the lines at the corners of his eyes wrinkling and that familiar half-smile. He was so—so—

So then he kissed him, hard, on the mouth. It was so good, so satisfying and so right, that he continued it. He pushed the other man back against the grass, with a hand on his arm, and did it harder. For his part, Bilbo put his hand on Thorin’s neck and rubbed his thumb thoughtfully over the back of it; and then stroked his hand along his face, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Thorin leaned down and said huskily into his ear: “ _Deny_ it. Tell me that you did not long for me to do that, on our journey. You wished that, and more.”

“Well, I don’t think I shall. Deny it, I mean.” Bilbo replied. If he had any other jibes, any irreverent _teasing_ , intended at that moment, it was swallowed up in Thorin’s next kiss.

#

Bilbo had arrived home one afternoon to find Thorin Oakenshield, sitting up very straight and haughty on the back of a sturdy white pony just outside his parlor window. Staring into it, in fact, with a stormy expression on his face.

He’s rung, Bilbo thought, and knocked and gotten no answer, since I was out. And now he is annoyed. I don’t suppose it’s occurred to him to write a note and put it in the letter box, _Sorry I missed you, I shall come back at tea time_ , like an ordinary person. Perhaps he doesn’t have a pencil, and he probably doesn’t remember about tea time—  ”

 And then it occurred to him that Thorin Oakenshield had ridden all the way from Erebor to see him, without sending a message on ahead: possibly because he felt uncertain how Bilbo would receive him.  

 “Hullo,” he said. “Won’t you come in?”

A few minutes later, Thorin stood on the other side of the great window in the parlor of Bilbo’s home; now he was inside, staring out it. He had his hands clasped behind him and the late afternoon light laid a gentle, highly complimentary gilding on his noble profile, and on his thick spill of black hair.

 But then most lights were flattering to Thorin, Bilbo thought. He moved about the room, waiting for Thorin to come out with whatever had brought him. He sorted his letters, took his shopping to the pantry, came back again, set a kettle on.

“You left,” said Thorin, finally. “You went home.” 

“So I did.”

“You have written to me,” said Thorin, after another pause. Bilbo didn’t know how to reply to that one; so he looked blankly at his desk, with its neat stack of letter paper, inkwell and pens.

 “Yes?” He replied at last, to fill the silence. “Not too often, I hope? I can rather prose on, I suppose. Gandalf says I put in too much description of things.”

 “I have cherished them,” said Thorin. “Your letters. They bring me joy. And word of your peaceful life here, for which I take great,” he looked at the floor. “In which I endeavor to take great comfort. I wish to be happy for you, that you are content.” 

Thorin did not look very happy, however. At this look of melancholy, Bilbo went nearer to his friend. He raised a hand; Thorin, with his back to him, did not see it, and it hung there, in the air.

“But you have never spoken,” said Thorin. “Of returning to the Mountain. Never mentioned a plan to visit, or to —  ” He does not say what else Bilbo might have planned.

“Ah,” said Bilbo. He did not reply, _I was waiting for an invitation_ , or _I have been very busy_. Instead, he let his hovering hand fall on Thorin’s back. “I’m afraid I’ve been a bit of a coward, there.” He paused, waiting until his friend’s back minutely relaxed; he felt strangely aware of the contact, casual as it was. The strong plane of muscle, the warmth, under the palm of his hand. “I was not quite sure how I would fit into things, you see.”

 "Fit into things?” said Thorin. “Are you not my friend? May a King not have a friend?”

 Again, Bilbo found that platitudes arose to his lips: _you have many friends,_ or _your people love you_. But he rejected them. He knew that with Thorin, it was important not to hold him distant, with petty, polite equivocation; he retreated into reserve far too easily.

Instead he said, “Of course I am, and of course, you may. I hope you will stay with me for a while?”

#

  
After the afternoon in which they kissed in the long meadow grass, they did quite a bit of wandering, all through the hills and brooks and little woods of the Shire.  

Other Hobbits stopped to stare, of course. Bilbo often nodded or waved. Thorin ignored them. He was not even being rude, by Dwarrow standards, the Hobbit realized. Dwarves in private conversation with one another would ignore other people, or use a hand signal to ward another off, or at greater need, cry, “Bugger off, will you?” They were not given to small talk, and respected privacy.

In defense of his curious neighbors, it was not often that a Hobbit of the Shire was seen wandering its lanes with a Dwarf. And not only that, a tall, magnificent-looking Dwarf, even one who was under the illusion that he had dressed down, like a commoner, to the point of anonymity.

On one of their rambles, they bought a leather flagon of ale from the Bywater Inn, and browsed along the little river till they found a shady spot amid the stones. Now Thorin took his turn with questions, which Bilbo had seen brewing for some time.

“Very little at all,” he replied to one of these questions. “Our people are not cruel about it, like one hears of some of the Big People. But most ignore it, as they tend to do with anything that doesn’t —  fit in. And some can be unkind.” 

He drew one bare foot through the cooling stream. “When I was rather young, there was someone who mattered to me. We went together for quite a bit. Spoke of making plans for the future. But he, well, he rather lost his nerve. Couldn’t stand wrangling with his parents, and being left out of things, you see. So he married a lass, from one of the most respectable Shire families. Not very happily.”

Thorin nodded. Such things were not unfamiliar to him, either, it seemed. 

Bilbo looked down for the next part. “Some years ago, long after people had written me off as an eccentric bachelor, I met someone down in the Eastmarch. The other end of this little land, that is. We saw each other quietly for some time. We were not a terribly great fit, ever, but we were both lonely. It wasn’t very good, going to bed together. I thought for a while that it might have been my fault, seeing as I hadn’t a lot of experience.”

A flock of coots sailed by in the stream, with their funny, bobbing heads. For some reason, watching them helped Bilbo on with his tale, despite the slightly sick feeling that rose up in his throat.

“But after a while, I realized I was simply disappointed in him. He didn’t want—  didn’t need things to be any better. He seemed to enjoy me staying as a disreputable secret, as it were. And—  he liked the fact that I had money, and a great family name, even though he was too timid to let anyone know of us. It was all rather miserable. I broke it off. There’s been no one since.”

“I told you that it wasn’t a very romantic tale.” Bilbo had striven to tell the little story in as bare words as he could; not to embroider or make much of it; such a dreary, scanty account, it sounded in his ears. But he did not mean to feel sorry for himself.

Thorin seemed to be staring into the rippling stream. _He’s probably had_ , Bilbo thought, _hundreds of people in love with him, and dozens of lovers, and_ —  

He did not know what he expected to happen next. But it was not Thorin Oakenshield suddenly standing up and wading to the shore, putting on his boots, and holding out his hand to him. “This cannot be borne!” he said to Bilbo. 

Back at Bag End, the Dwarf drew his friend straight to the bedroom.

Experts in the arts of love might advise a person, after a drought of many years’ standing, against proceeding straight from kissing to a vigorous fucking by a man who outweighs you by two stone of sheer muscle, who doesn’t quite know his own strength.

“But,” thought Bilbo, arguing against these imaginary counselors, “they would be wrong. Quite wrong.” For he was very happy indeed, lying in bed next to Thorin, tired and sore, and missing proper supper time.

#

The very day that Thorin arrived in the Shire, Bilbo took the Ring, and placed it in a little wooden box with a lock, deep in one of his wardrobes.  Mysterious a thing as it remained, he knew how it made him feel, at times, and he didn’t want that anywhere near Thorin. It would be like having a friend who was ill, and bringing him in contact with that which brought his sickness on. The Hobbit could not have explicitly put this sense of things into words, or explained why he knew it. But he did. And he loved Thorin far too well to risk such hurt.

The odd thing was, he didn’t even think of _It_ , after. For weeks and weeks, all through Thorin’s visit in fact, the Ring was as far out of his mind as it had ever been, since his journey.

#

 His friend the King may have had a great deal more experience in things of the body; but it had come amid years of hard exile, among warriors and rough companions, and people who were used to taking his orders. Not that Bilbo was complaining.

 Thorin really only had three modes of lovemaking. Getting him on his back and fucking like a stallion; sucking his cock, which he did by pushing him against a wall and setting to; and putting his hand on Bilbo’s erection and essentially ordering him to come, which worked with embarrassing ease.

 Bilbo tried to work his way around his own inexperience. He practiced at sucking Thorin off in turn: he did quite like his big, thick cock, in its thicket of dark hair. But doing things properly took getting used to. Thorin generally let him play at it for some time, murmuring encouraging things, and petting his hair while he did so, then got impatient, threw him on his back and climbed on top. Well, thought the Hobbit, _taking charge of things_ was one of Thorin’s very favorite modes, so that was all right.

He did succeed at getting the other to slow down, at times, when his cock was in him, especially by caressing him fondly and telling him what a handsome, stubborn, brave, beloved, fool he was.

As far as how fast and easily Bilbo came when Thorin chose to use his hands on him, well, there didn’t seem to be any cure for that; even with experience.  “Whenever you speak softly to me, like that, and touch me, it’s all over,” he explained one day, while they were in bed. Thorin looked at him from half-closed eyes, and leaned in close. “And what, Master Burglar, if I speak roughly to you—  what if I chide you, and use you rudely?’ And he showed what he meant, as he spoke. “Oh!” cried Bilbo. “Oh! Much the same, I fear.”

#

Thorin eventually had to go back, of course. Even frequent letters and ravens, and the great trust the King placed in Fílí as his regent, could not cure that. But he went back a happier, less lonely Dwarf, and the next year, Bilbo went to visit _him_. He made sure to put a proper steward in charge of his property in the Shire, this time.

And so, after a journey far less adventurous (he took advantage of a passing trade party of Dwarves from the Blue Mountains), he came to Erebor, and saw it in the days of its rebirth, happy and shining with silver lanterns, and Thorin in his Raven Crown, beloved King Under the Mountain. He saw his old friends of the Company, and realized that, no matter how confused they were by the entire affair, it made _them_ content to see Thorin content, even if no one put a name to what was between the pair.

He left the Ring behind him, locked away and hidden in a deep place under his home that no one knew of. The very first week he rode away, he felt a terrific pang, and then longing and anxiety and itchy sickness in his body, and then— nothing. By the time he reached the Misty Mountains, it fell from his mind like a snake shedding an old, dry skin.

 As he headed home, happy as he had ever been in his life, he thought: _I shall write to Gandalf, and ask him to take charge of it._ “Whatever it is, whatever good it did me in the Quest, I don’t quite like the feel of it,” he said aloud. “I don’t like its whispery voice, or that dreadful place I go to when I put it on, all grey and strange, or the thought of poor awful Gollum. I don’t _need_ it.”

#

 He was at home on a lovely snowy New Year’s Eve in the Shire. His cousin Drogo, a good-hearted playmate of his youth, and his wife and little boy were visiting, and helping make the season bright. Outside the snow fell, and the fire crackled on the hearth. He thought tomorrow he would begin to draw up a plan for the year: what months to spend at home, and which traveling.

Suddenly he heard a rapping. On the sill outside the great parlor window, a raven had alighted. It looked at him with its dark, liquid eye, and tapped again on the glass. Unfastening the clasp, he let it in. “Kha!” It cried.”Kha-zad! Khazâd! Arr, arr! Err—   Erebor!”  “Yes, yes,” he said impatiently, “I might have guessed, you know!” He examined it, and found the little scroll attached to its leg.

“It is with great sorrow that we inform you that Fílí, son of Dís, is King Under the Mountain, for Thorin our beloved King is no more.”

When Bilbo next noticed anything, he was in bed. His cousin was leaning over him: “Oh, take care, cousin Bilbo! My lad Frodo has run for the doctor, he’ll be here soon, and set you right!” 

“What happened?” said Bilbo, thickly. _Let it be a dream, let it be a dream, let it be a dream._

“You fainted, and hit your head, you poor fellow! Perhaps it was that great nasty bird, enough to startle anyone, making all that noise and refusing to get out of the room!”

They were interrupted by a boy’s piping voice. “Papa, the doctor is coming, but look who I found in the lane! He says he’s a wizard, and he’s here to see Uncle!”

As soon as Bilbo saw Gandalf’s weary, sorrowing face, he knew there was no hope. No hope at all.

There was a story, which had to do with the rising shadow in the East, and the darkness falling on Mirkwood, and fell creatures that were sent spying on the free peoples. How Thorin rode North to meet with Dain in the Iron Hills, was waylaid, and fell with Orcrist in his hand, standing over his nephew Kílí, and dying that he might live.

Bilbo heard it all, but much of the detail eluded him. His hands played with the coverlet.  He turned away from Gandalf, who is sitting in a chair by the side of his bed, looking at him with ancient eyes full of pity.

From deep under the house, down in its little locked box, in its little hidden hiding place, the Ring spoke to him. “It’s not too late!’ it said. “You can have him back.”

Out in the garden, the raven cawed. Down, down below, the voice continued.

“I can do this, and _all_ things. I can give him back to you.”

  
#

 

**Author's Note:**

> #
> 
> If you kudo, thank you and bless you. Comments are the soul food of this writer nom nom, so if you feel all inclined, it will make me happy!
> 
> On tumblr at [www.tumblr.com/blog/lordnelson100](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/lordnelson100%20) and if you super-liked something and want to tell folks, well, thus are the seeds of fic scattered through the land!


End file.
